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Shifting to Curiosity

By Spring Gillard on October 26, 2012

One of the big challenges I’ve had in my first couple months of school is my own resistance. I’ve been around the block a few times, so when someone tells me I have to do something and in a specific way, I feel myself bracing, a great big NO rising from my toes, with an accompanying chorus of thoughts: that’s a waste of time, bad approach, just plain stupid, so not the real world. Then I went to a workshop, called “The Joy of Conflict.” Uh huh. It’s one of the perks of grad school, I get to go to some amazing professional development workshops on campus, for free! Gary Harper, a former lawyer and the workshop leader, wrote a book called, the Joy of Conflict Resolution: Transforming Victims, Villains and Heroes in the Workplace and at Home. The very first activity was to put our names on a plasticized tent card. That I could do, without resistance. I pulled a card out of the pile on my table. One side was blank where we could write our names in erasable marker. The other side had a phrase on it. Mine read: shift judgment to curiosity. Nailed me and the workshop had barely begun. Shifting into curious mode now.